What is niacinamide?Updated a year ago
Niacinamide is a form of vitamin B3. While vitamin B3 doesn’t occur naturally in the human body, we get plenty of it in our diet because it’s in just about everything. It plays a major role in how our body metabolizes nutrients and creates or repairs DNA.
It acts as a coenzyme, which means that it binds to enzymes in the body and facilitates their activity. Different coenzymes will activate different enzymes in the body, so what’s remarkable about vitamin B3 is responsible for the action of over 400 different enzymes.
In skin care, niacinamide is the best version of vitamin B3. It’s fairly stable and non-irritating, and its benefits are very diverse with pretty much no side effects or drawbacks.
Niacinamide is sometimes also called nicotinamide. Despite the name, it’s not related to nicotine from tobacco in any way, shape, or form. The only connection is that nicotine competes with the body’s ability to use niacinamide since the two compounds act on the same enzyme binding sites.